Casino gaming machines are well known in the art. Such devices may be embodied as spinning reel slot machines, video slot machines, video poker machines or the like. These machines are played by a player making a wager and prompting play. A game processor, such as a computer processor, selects and displays an outcome. In a typical slot machine, card game machine, or the like, the processor selects and displays an outcome by randomly selecting and displaying game indicia (such as slot reel symbols, playing cards, or the like). A determination is made whether the outcome is a winning or losing outcome based on the combination of game indicia selected and displayed. Depending on the type of game, the combinations may be examined based on some predefined constraint such as predefined pay lines, or the like. While different games treat awards different, generally speaking, the player is rewarded for winning outcomes. Losing outcomes usually result in the loss of the player's wager, e.g. the player's wager amount is retained by the gaming device.
It has become popular to provide gaming machines with secondary features, such as bonus games, side bets, bonus awards, secondary games, or the like. For example, in a conventional bonus feature gaming machine, a player places a wager and plays a base game to conclusion. If the outcome of the base game includes a trigger condition, a bonus feature is enabled. The bonus feature may entail the display of bonus outcome selections where the player makes a selection to reveal a bonus. In another popular game, a bonus feature is embodied as an electro-mechanical wheel that spins to display a bonus amount.
However, a disadvantage of the current systems is that the secondary feature typically runs only after winning outcomes. That is, in most systems, the trigger condition for the secondary feature is that the player win. Aside from the fact that losing players are generally excluded from participating in secondary features, this also means that secondary features run very rarely. Since it is known that secondary features generate player interest in a game, using only winning outcomes to trigger a secondary feature would tend to minimize the effect of the secondary feature to both generate initial participation by a player in a game and retain a player at a game.